Our great patriot, Adam Schiff has stirred the nation’s awareness of how near to the end of The Republic we are.

But for me, Eyeball_Kid’s posts have compelled me to raise a problem for America under a lawless president.

Here’s our problem: our unfounded belief that there will even BE a November election. Every day, millions of us say, “oh, we’ll remove this guy in November.”
Millions of us assume that MF45 will do nothing to stop that.

What in his past deeds would ever make us think he would not insure his November win? We have no evidence of that. Nothing.

All the more then, do we need to seriously reconsider our assumption that we will retain any voting power. At all.

To ignore that possibility as part of an “October surprise" is to mentally hide from everything we’ve learned about how 45 and Republicans have operated since Reagan.

We have to see what’s in front of us. Right now.

Right now, millions of Americans NOW have to think about the consequences of a Senate acquittal that will go way beyond Trump’s feel-good rallies.

Already setting up their hold on this government, 45, his cabinet, cyber, ground operatives and Republicans can do a lot that’s unseen and unreported in the next ten months. Not only can they wreck the 2020 election, they can force despair and withdrawal of the electorate and Democrats; and they can eliminate future elections altogether. They have come to make us eat, one bite at a time, this dead Republic elephant in the room.

1.
As Eyeball_Kid and others in recent weeks have pointed out, we first need to really see 45's supporters.
They occupy much bigger space than do gullible voters at 45’s spite/grievance rallies.

At the top space of federal government, Trump’s leadership all support the unitary executive assertions that AG Barr loves. Barr makes the rounds at think tanks, legal foundations and universities to promote that the moral decay of America necessitates a “unified power of the executive.”

At state levels, Republicans all support a "permanent Republican minority-majority" goal, set in motion by Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay in the 1980s, which continue to include
-- gerrymandering,
-- manipulating voting machines,
-- changing voting data in servers, and
-- radio/TV markets saturated with right wing propaganda.

Do not underestimate the Trump Party's awareness — at any of these levels — of what they can do after the Senate acquittal. They’ve been at it for forty years, and more is coming.

As for Trump himself, watch the Senate acquittal, and then watch the threads multiply here over Trump and what his henchmen do with that acquittal in the next ten months. But those posts will miss the larger context.

From Eyeball_Kid (somewhat paraphrased):

First, Trump, upon Senate acquittal, will use this explicit permission to enable ALL of the above, AND he'll then pull in propaganda efforts by FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS, unhindered by Congress or any other entity.

Next, we'd BETTER remember the Patriot Act, because it gives Trump the power to manufacture a national security emergency in order to cancel the election. It will be within his power to do so if he sees an election loss looming

If you're thinking that the "manufacturing" part will make it invalid, think again. By the time Congress gets the news, it will already be too late. A dictator doesn't have to wait for approval. Besides, this Acquittal will already have rendered Congressional oversight ignored and impotent.

2.
But a fascist dictatorship will roll out hereafter whether we see it or not. Immersed in the last years of ugly news and legal fights, we’ve been only vaguely aware of Putin’s Eurasian Project to destabilize and stigmatize resisting banks, bankers, media, governments and civil rights organizations of the “decadent West.”

More noticeable has been the Republican Fifth Column inside and outside our government that has taken their money, welcomed them into America, enabled their residency, laundered money, hacked Internet (from utility infrastructure levels to grandparents' zombie computers); fake journalist “enemies,” fake news, trolls and all. Hybrid insurgency. For the last six years we’ve read and shared books written about it all.

IF we find that we live UNDER A dictator, it will be because we finally see several components about dictatorship around us:

— We’ll see Barr's and Republicans’ finally settling the issue that this president can do whatever he wants — he will — coequal branches of government hierarchalized, hobbled.
— We’ll see when we take into account that 19.5% of Americans didn't know who they voted for, sold their national inheritance for a mess of pottage, the base.
— We’ll face that the rest of Trump supporters still will never admit their mistake, just double down, arm themselves, and forge ahead to run the American house, dragging along their sunk cost fallacy with them like an old, gimp friend.

Hate it or not, we’ll have to accept how much Trumpers have wanted their corporate christo-fascist nazi government, false prophet president and apocalypse (with fundamentalist Barr's hovering support).

3.
When we do we will not be shocked, outraged and crazy when authoritarian followers from bottom to top of our land won't mind a suspension of a general election. Obedience has always been easier. It can happen in ten months.

We’ll be in a nation of men, not a nation of constitutional law. Where we’ll hear: No one’s above the law? Nah, that’s all in the past. I’ve got news for you: get used to it.

Under that nation of men, the only civil war will be one that Trump foments. What have been random mass shootings are a preview, a mere click away, from purges that are the first thing a new dictator directs.

“Leader McConnell’s plan for a dark of night impeachment trial confirms what the American people have seen since Day One: the Senate GOP Leader has chosen a cover-up for the President, rather than honor his oath to the Constitution. Shamefully, this sham proposal does not even allow for admitting the House record into evidence at the trial.

“Leader McConnell’s process is deliberately designed to hide the truth from the Senate and from the American people, because he knows that the President’s wrongdoing is indefensible and demands removal. No jury would be asked to operate on McConnell’s absurdly compressed schedule, and it is obvious that no Senator who votes for it is intending to truly weigh the damning evidence of the President’s attacks on our Constitution.

“The public now knows why Leader McConnell has been hiding his resolution: the Clinton comparison was a lie. Clearly and sadly, Leader McConnell has misled the American people. For weeks, he has insisted that he will adhere to the rules used during the Clinton impeachment trial and that ‘fair is fair’ – but his proposal rejects the need for witnesses and documents during the trial itself. In contrast, for the Clinton trial, witnesses were deposed and the President provided more than 90,000 documents.

“President Trump undermined our national security, jeopardized the integrity of our elections and violated the Constitution all for his own personal, political gain. He has repeatedly said that he would do so again. Duty, honor and country are at stake. Every Senator who supports this sham process must be held accountable to the American people.”

Cost: As of 2011, annual membership = $52,000 per person, $263,000 for "Industry Partner" and $527,000 for "Strategic Partner."

The Davos meetup fee = $19,000 per person.

When: 21-24 January 2020

Topic for 2020: “Stakeholders for a Cohesive and Sustainable World”

Security:
-- Soldiers patrol the streets,
-- security checks are carried out on personnel,
-- vehicle and bags on access roads to Davos.
-- Snipers can be seen stationed on the roofs of buildings;
-- security is wall-to-wall within the main Forum known as the Congress Center.
-- Swiss armed forces attend the event.

On the ACLU's Facebook page, I'm calling them out
-- for being "concern" trolls, AND NOT GOING TO COURT;
-- for only "asking" the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms (??) and Rules Committee (??) to change their "rules," AND NOT GOING TO COURT; and
-- for not scrambling to take the Senate's censoring of the press TO COURT.

The courts can't make the Senate's rules, but the courts can damn sure make sure that those rules do NOT stop the Constitution at the Senate door, or their whole trial obstructs justice.

If the ACLU doesn't stand up for the First Amendment rights of The People and a Free Press during the third impeachment trial in U.S. history -- and right now they're NOT -- then they've failed to do what they were born to do.

What good do they really do for The People, for whom the longest standing democracy in recorded human history was founded?!

I remember that in 1969, I'd turned the last page of the last volume the Lord of the Rings. I felt sad, more wistful than I'd ever felt from story experience. Which is experience.

I shook my head at this trilogy's brilliant, multi-level, multi-location panorama. After some silence, I looked at my daughter's father.

"This is so eye-popping amazing, so broad and deep in the creating of whole new beings, languages, songs, poetry, rituals, ideas of war and peace, that Hollywood will never, ever make a movie of this. Not even like this. It just can't." Having seen all kinds of film renderings of mythology and literature in varying inferior quality to their stories, I was sure that this trilogy was final proof, sadly, that epic storytelling can never be fully realized in film.

Lord of the Rings reminds us that we are epic -- as Samwise said to Frodo -- when we are glad that we can be together at the making and ending of all things.

May Christopher Tolkien rest in the peace of literary greats who give us more than story beauty, human beauty, suffering's beauty; but who instill in us readers the soul experience of Earthling peace and courage.

30 years later, in my 50's -- as my kids thought I openly wept over the movie, The Return of the King -- I couldn't explain the laughable wrongness of my old self, or how lucky I was to experience over again the epic courage, love and peace effort to carry on. That carrying on in film still makes me shake my head.

Christopher Tolkien, Mapper of Middle Earth, Keeper of the Legendarium, must always be as revered and loved as his father. Both spent their lives to show us that life's meaning is enough in the striving; and to be glad to be together at the end of all things.